Currently Untitled
by DTL
Summary: Waking up. Waiting. Endings following endings, and then new beginnings. Akuroku.
1. Chapter 1

I could see him standing on the porch, that shock of hair a distinct, little flame in the distance, obvious and bright against the graying sky. It looked like the sky was about to crack. I knew it was going to rain, torrents stretching over ocean, rushing to land.

The atmosphere did nothing to ebb my anxiety.

A stone's throw from the house I had an idea that he turned his eyes toward me, for a moment, but he didn't move his head. He was staring at the ocean, farther away, I thought, than the horizon. The wind batted at his hair. He looked, in that moment, to me like the ocean-I could see, somehow, in my mind's eye, see that his mind was tossing, but his face remained placid. Not angry, and not at peace. Patient, thoughtful, and waiting. I knew, somehow, that he had been waiting for me, waiting, I thought, as he always had. Without knowing how long we had or how long we would, we had been waiting for each other since the last, and my heart, this new heart, fell flat over its feet when I climbed the porch stairs and moved to stand, maybe 5 feet from him, I couldn't stand to be closer, I thought I would loose my mind.

Smell salt, and wet, and the cool mist off the ocean. I thought, if his hair smells like that I would bury my head into it against his neck and close my eyes. He cocked his face toward me, barely, and asked me casually what was up, as if my coming there only confirmed a comfortable pattern. "Not much."

What a lie. And a bad lie, and we both knew it, but I didn't know how to begin to tell him the thing I needed to tell him, the thing I had needed to say for months and months, and I was guilty and I was greedy. I wanted all of us to stay as we had been, bonfires on the beach at night, carefree summer afternoons, only broken by occasional letters from the King encouraging us to enjoy a long and well deserved "rest" as he put it. And we did. Sea-salt ice cream and trips to Twilight Town. If we weren't laughing we were smiling, and although I went to bed at night knowing there was much yet to say, the unsaid was so easily forgotten between five people so easily comfortable with each other.

Sora noticed it before I did. We were too quiet. We continued to smile, but we said less, and what we did say was punctuated. We were making every syllable count. He caught me one day cutting through imaginary heartless alone and pulled me under the board walk after a good-natured spar. Panting, he asked me, timing typically perfect, what was wrong. I played with the keyblade in my hands for a while, prodding pieces of debris and shells and pebbles, and he waited, and finally, I knew, I had to tell him everything.

"I…don't know how to…and…I can't just tell him…. I. I can't just tell him, Sora, that I'm sorry, I can't just tell him and I don't know how."

Sora just smiled in his knowing way, and he looked ahead for a moment, at the waves rolling under the sun. He said, "Axel…" and he paused, and then, "He knows. He knows you want to but you don't know what to say. But I think, I think he wants you to say it. Not because he needs to hear it, but because it's coming from you."

"Have you talked to him?"

"No."

And his voice and his face were still smiling, and he threw a reassuring arm around me and laughed, the way Donald and Goofy had often done to him. He asked if I wanted him to come along, half of the way.

But I went alone, and now I felt alone, even next to him, and I turned and watched the ocean, and we stood there, like that, face defying the water for I don't know how long. It was excruciating how he let me stand there noiselessly, neither moving nor breaking the silence. When I thought the sound of the waves was going to make my ears bleed, I said quietly, "Axel?" and I don't think he heard it, or he wouldn't let me keep quiet, and so I said it again and he turned toward me. The look which over-spread his face was almost quizzical, and for a moment I thought he did know what I wanted to say.

"Roxas?"

I went back to playing with the hair behind my neck. I felt ridiculous, and I must have looked ridiculous, because I could hear the grinning smirk in his voice when he said, "You never were any good at coming to a point." I sighed, and he turned away again, linking his hands behind his head. "I've been thinking, Rox. I think I'm going to go away for a while."

"What!?" I hadn't meant to say it so loudly, but I hadn't expected to hear what I heard, either. The blood ran out of my hands. "Why?"

"To move around,"

"Where are you going to go?" I cut him off.

"I think I'll world-hop for a while. Visit all the places I didn't have a chance to enjoy…the last time." His tone clouded, just barely discernable, and all I could manage was "Oh" my thoughts blank and racing.

"How long will you be gone?'

"Dunno. Haven't decided yet." This is the part, where all the things I wanted to say, could have tumbled out of my mouth, but I asked instead "Are you…going alone?"

Although I know it didn't, I felt like it took him a full minute to answer. "Who would I take with me, Rox?"

How could I do it? How could I tell him I was selfishly sorry now, when he wanted to be gone, wanted to get away, and my telling him would feel like a final goodbye from someone wanting to clear their conscience before making a delineated break? It would sound like self-justification. It would sound righteous. I couldn't do it. He would hate me.

And then, like he knew I would falter, knew when I would fall silent, I felt that Sora must be thinking of me because his words dripped back into my head, one at a time, and I knew, either now, I make my peace with the looming storm, and watch it wash over me, or wait and never, and loose Axel altogether, all over again. If I did not tell him now, I knew, that although he would say it, he would never come back.

"Axel?" and this time he didn't answer, and I kept my eyes fixed on the break and the turning of the waves, and as definite as I could make my voice, I said, "I'm sorry."

I knew he had heard it, but he didn't turn to face me, didn't flinch, didn't shift. I spoke to the water and my heart felt wet. "I'm sorry, that I left, and I'm sorry that I left you alone. I'm sorry for what I couldn't remember, and for what I said, and I'm sorry, that, when you…when you were going, that I couldn't come back." Funny things, hearts. No one ever told me, ever told us, that having one was far harder than getting one could ever be. He didn't turn around, and I kept going, because I didn't know what else to say. "I've wanted to tell you, all this time, but I didn't know how to say it. It doesn't, after everything, sound like it's enough, to say I'm sorry…. But I am. And I'm glad, that we're both…here." He still hadn't moved, and my heart sank, which I realized only then, hearts could. My cheeks felt cold. I had said enough. I was leaving.

"Did you find the answers you were looking for?"

His voice was quiet, not because he was speaking quietly, it was tonally quiet. I could not decide if the thin edge around what he had said was bitter, or sad, or if he was watching, at a distance, some fading regret, or if it was the voice of a friend who, watching a friend plummet into an unknown journey with an unknown end, really wanted to know the answer to that question. In hindsight I think it was all of those things, and that no one part of that tone dominated the others. The water leapt. We heard the rumble of thunder beyond the horizon.

"Yeah. I did."

Those green eyes are piercing, and when he looks at me I feel like I don't need to say a word, and that I couldn't speak a single word coherent, when his face is staring into mine.

"I never really blamed you, Roxas. You couldn't help who, or where you were, and you couldn't help going. You had a right to an answer. I just…didn't want you to leave."

His voice was confession, and redemption, but I couldn't let him allow me to deserve it. "I don't have the right, to call you my friend again…"

"Roxas," and his voice was kind, and it unnerved me to learn that Axel had learned kindness, or that I had only now become aware that he had known it all along. "You don't need to be, you can stop being, sorry."

I couldn't believe it, that that could be true, and so we fell into silence again, although he continued to look at me for a long moment after I had looked away. It made me feel that the truth of what he had said was inescapable, however much I wanted to escape it. He meant it, and I couldn't protest, knowing a confrontation of the truth was futile.

There was one thing I wanted desperately to know. "Did you? Did you find the answers you were looking for?" Behind my voice I was pleading.

He smiled, a genuine smile, "All but one. Just one."

"And what is that one?"

Sea-salt ice cream and trips to Twilight Town. Summer months and one thousand hints and misses. He was always right behind me if we walked anywhere. He sat across from me in booths and next to me in movie theatres. On the train, I paid for his fare, and I made sure I took the standing room next to him sitting, if the train was crowded. It had poured unexpectedly one afternoon and we all got caught in it, and he had given me his coat because my own was soaked and I was freezing.

And always his eyes.

Bonfires were easy because Axel had retained his ability to create fire from nothing, from that same bottomless well of energy that gifted us with the keyblades. But that was the only time we ever saw him use it; I don't think he liked to, too often. Together, just the five of us, laughing and bright stars spattered across the midnight sky, and always Axel across from me, eyes shining and face quiet. I remember the night I caught his face, once, just once, and I never dared to look after. When fire radiates heat, I never feel that it is natural heat, the heat of burning wood and ash and smoke. It is always Axel, always a projection of his skin and his hands, and I can feel the flame moving, when the wind knocks it, and it leans toward me like Axel would lean toward me, to comment on something we were watching, or some place we were going, or to ask me what I was reading. Leaning, and I felt his eyes on me, as if his eyes were flame, and I looked up, between the red ribbons flickering, and he caught me. Those green eyes were burning, under sky and star, and my breath caught, and I could feel that for one long minute, I couldn't breathe.

Noone noticed, and around me Kairi and Riku and Sora were laughing, but Axel and I sat, the bonfire between us, eyes pressed to one another, and I could have touched fire to touch him, seared away skin to bone to be a part of him.

And then Sora threw his arm around my shoulders, Kairi asked him for a marshmallow, and Riku was fashioning kabob skewers out of sticks, and I never dared to catch Axel's eyes, those green eyes, again.

What is that one? I had to know. Axel slowly walked toward me, movement deliberate. He stopped less than an arm's length, within reach, and my heart hitched. "Were you waiting?"

I did the thing I swore I'd never do. My eyes shot up into his eyes. "Every minute."

He exhaled, a long, quiet sigh, making me aware his breath had been held.

And his eyes were burning.

To say to say to say, pounding heart, a pounding heart. It threw itself against my ribs, exquisite pain we'd never known. The fingers of one hand brushed my jaw. I leaned, and we were burned alive.


	2. Chapter 2

I remember waking up.

I was not warm, and I was not cold. My body was not stiff and my eyes were not sore, and there was neither darkness behind me nor light before me. It was like waking up from anesthesia; the world behind is blank, is black, and slowly the mind solidifies and the past walks forward. I remembered fire and metal, and anger, and a vindicated will, acidic and bitter. I remembered faces, which became people, and places which filled with color and become three-dimensional in memory, and the loss of color, long white rooms, and voices, and names, and my name. I suddenly remembered my name, that I had a name, and that it was still my own where it should not have been, so I must have, I must be…but I did not remember falling, or falling asleep. I simply remember waking up, like blinking from one moment to the next, but when my mind adjusted to its own light, I became aware of warm sand under my feet, and a pleasant breeze on my arms, and even more suddenly than my name, the world came rushing up to and over me like a mad tide, and I staggered under the sound and scent and sight of it all.

A beach, and palm trees heavy with fruit, and a bright sun and a tossing ocean, and feet padding on the shore, and there, running toward me, was Sora.

Sora.

And the name felt like a confection in my mind and my mouth.

Sora.

I think, I cried. I _think I cried, because at the time I still could not recall what crying was, but he kneeled next to me and held out an open hand, and smiled, and I remembered in that moment, that I was alive._

_Kairi._

_Riku._

_Other names followed Sora, and these names pulled me to my feet, Kairi laughing and Riku's calm grin. I tried to speak to them, all of them, but my voice felt like paper and sand, like I hadn't spoken for years and years, but then, maybe I hadn't._

_How much time had passed? And where were we? How had I made it here? Were we the only ones? One thousand questions rushed through my head, but Sora, always Sora, was there with an answer. They had been looking for me, not only the three of them, but the others as well. They anticipated, somehow, my coming. My coming back. They had been waiting for me. My own existence, next to Sora, was a mystery, too wonderful and too beautiful to know. It was enough to know, that I did exist. I didn't need an answer. I didn't need any more, anymore. _

_Tentatively, I placed one hand on my chest._

_There beating,_

_was a heart._

_Like the others, it had been waiting for me; like them, it too was real. _

_I felt the blood in my veins and the cool tips of my fingers. I felt damp cheeks and a warm neck. I felt the ebb and flow of flushed memories, and a heart beat waiting. Each beat, waiting. Each beat, following. Each beat, next._

_Waiting._

_Waiting._

_Waiting. "Axel!" Memory threaded on memory and the name came sweeping through my head like a brushfire. I hurriedly looked around, excitedly scanning the beach and the trees and the faces of my friends, hardly knowing what I was looking for. _

_Their laughter slipped away. I turned and looked at Sora's face. He looked back at me, lips slightly parted like he was about to say something, but he didn't. Riku turned his face away from me. Kairi said my name quietly, like she, too, meant to follow it with words._

"_He's…not here, Roxas," Sora said slowly._

_But. "Where is he?" I didn't yet understand._

"_You know, he's not from the Destiny Islands. He…he probably wouldn't come back here anyway. We'll just…have to find him when we leave the island." Kairi tried to raise her voice and sound hopeful._

"_Yeah. Next time we write to the King, we'll…" Sora did the same, but his voiced faded in my ears. Axel wasn't here. He hadn't come. _

_He hadn't come back._

_Black cloaks, and fire and metal, and a promise, not really a promise in words, but in understanding. He had said it, but at the time I couldn't understand. "Just because you…"_

_And now I did. He would not come back. He could not come back._

_Long white rooms, and white windows with no glass and white doors with no answers. _

_Axel had offered me a friendship, which I knew to be impossible. He offered me fading light when the white became too bright. Were we allowed to feel, he and I? Were we allowed to foster fragile glass hours when the walls were silent and a future like chalk dust?_

_He did it anyway, and I had left him. Left him, and he,_

_and he,_

_like flecks of burned paper riding a current of smoke into the night air._

_I could not call him friend. I could not call him back._

_And he was gone._

_But, then, when the thought hit the bottom of my heart and lolled to the side, heavy and dark as coal, something jumped there, shuddered, for the briefest fraction of a moment, and even as I said, "He's not coming back," I did not wholly believe it._

_That, I realize now, was the fraction of the moment in which I started waiting._

_Sora, Kairi, and Riku took me to their home, made me a bed to sleep in before I found my own, a meal to eat, and light to read by, and I waited. In the morning, we caught up on all the things we needed to say and wanted to say and we laughed again, and wondered emphatically, and sighed audibly, and smiled contentedly, and I waited._

_Time passed. People and letters came. News came. And it went. And I waited. I was happy, I suppose, with Sora always glad and smiling, and Kairi catching his hand, and Riku either silent or teasing them. But I didn't feel quite whole, I didn't feel complete. Scratching at the back of my mind, unsettled, the feeling, this feeling, something unrealized. _

_Did I call you? Was it the unsettled in my heart, that called you back again?_

_I couldn't sleep the night before, and in the morning the four of us made Twilight Town our destination, to stock up on provisions for a long awaited summer vacation. Summer. Vacation. The familiar desire and the alien desperation to be off the Destiny Islands were almost unbearable. _

_When we arrived in the city the scratching was acute. I felt nervous and irritable. Sora, whose apprehension of my moods was unsurprisingly keen, suggested we take the train out of town for a while, to explore, he said, some of the countryside. I was silently and enormously grateful, but I could not understand why. My head ached. We took advantage of several train stops and wandered through pleasant townships and outlying farmland. The hills here were still spring-green at the roots, but the heady green of summer blushed on the end of branch and the top of hillock. After several hours we began to hear gullcrying and the faint hush of tidal water. Another ocean brushing up against another shore came into view. Sora and Kairi kicked off their shores and ran to meet it. Riku strolled on behind them. The sun was an hour away from setting. My heart was pounding._

_I walked on the seam of the ocean and the sand, cool water over my feet, head racing. My companions ahead of me, strand behind me, sky above me, world around me. No-one marked us, the beach was empty of people. But someone was coming. The waiting the waiting the waiting had been heaving against my chest since we arrived in Town, but now I could feel it, below and underneath, a consciousness begging to be remembered. Closer, closer, someone was coming, in my mind, it was a face I couldn't see and a name I couldn't say, and when I thought my skull was going to split, the noise of the world stopped, Sora Kairi and Riku stopped, and we all stood, stock-still and staring, into a sunset which back-lit a figure walking slowly but definitely toward us. I knew, somehow, that he, he, was looking at me._

_The luminous sky set his hair on fire and obscured his face but he came closer, and I saw his hair was fire and then I knew his eyes were green and his name in my mind was cool water and the pounding stopped, the heaving stopped, and like my first day on Destiny Island, the world came crashing down around my ears._

"_Axel."_


	3. Chapter 3

_One of the many distinct memories of sitting, on the top of the clock tower, eating sea-salt ice cream, bars on sticks, with Roxas and watching the sun go down behind the seam of the world. In this one, I remember a large piece of ice cream broke off, fell away from the rest when Roxas bit into it, and hit the stone edge of the tower, between us. Roxas was disappointed and so I gave him the rest of mine, but I remember, for no reason that I could have explained, being caught for a moment, and watching that piece on the stone melt away slowly, and I remember thinking, wondering, if that was what it would feel like to die. To dissipate. To vanish, to melt away. When it finally happened, watching what I suppose were pieces of me float on above my head, that moment passed through my mind again, briefly, before I closed my eyes to forget._

_I remember that, dying, fading away, nothing hurt. You would expect, I suspect, a thing like that to hurt, but it didn't. It was nothing, a lot of nothing, but then we were nothing, no hearts to speak of, no soul to mourn us when we're gone, only tangled memories and grasping. _

_When I could still think, as if my eyes were still closed and I was speaking inside my own head, I tried to focus on some thing, some sense; could I feel my hands, were my eyes open, was the darkness tangible, was there sound in this place? Was this a place at all? It, I, was neither hot nor warm nor cold, no scent and no odor, and when I tired to imagine I was stretching my fingers into the darkness, I could feel neither fingers nor atmosphere._

_If I was going to be dead, I wanted to be dead, not stuck in the inbetween where I could think but sense nothing. I focused again, pooling all my thought, if it was all I had, into one place, forcing focus to fill my mind. I listened. Or, I must have been listening, because I heard a sound like an echo in an empty hall, not quite wind and not the echo of footfalls or breath. An echo of silence. But this noise had a steady rhythm, like a quiet tide, coming in and washing out, like steady breath sleeping, like slow, paced walking. I held onto it, in my mind, clutched it, tried to make myself realize what it was. Was this, I thought, how waiting feels? Is this a physical manifestation of Waiting? Waiting. Waiting. Waiti…Roxas. Roxas said he would be, he would be waiting for me. Roxas, who made me feel like I had a heart, that fragile and enormous thing each of us had wanted and destroyed through wanting. Rubbing my temples, I tried to remember what he had said, about hearts and feeling and _

_My temples? I had warm finger tips. My eyes darted back and forth, from a hand to hand I could feel in the darkness but not yet see. What was that noise, that persistent noise? I could feel my shoulders now, and long hair brushing against them, familiar. I could feel my torso and my hips and my legs. I rotated my ankles. I put a hand on the back of my neck. I placed a hand on my chest. _

_Then, the lights came on. Not all at once. Like a sunrise, bright imperceptibly gradual. I could feel cool and wet lapping my feet. The ground beneath my back was hard, and soft. My arms were warm. The warm felt like my palms feel before I push fire from my mind through my hands, but this warm was neither within or below; it was above, and above me was blue. All, endless blue, and when I tried to sit up, the world before me was blue, moving, turning, pushing forward and pulling back, and I was aware of salt air and the sound of bird and wave._

_And, above or below, I couldn't tell, the noise like silence echoing continued and my hand was still on my chest, and I _felt _the noise, it was under palm and fingers. That sound, was a heart beat._

_I almost choked on the exhaling air from my lungs. A heart beat. A heart beat. A heart. _

_I had a heart._

_How? I have words now for what I didn't know then, and I was giddy, like a man intoxicated with swelled hope and longing and sweet, sweet disbelief. I had a heart. And I decided, in those same first moments, that I didn't care who or how or when or why, but that I had a heart, I did have a heart, and it, the memories, the future and the past, were all mine, to make and mould and keep._

_And on a sun-lit strand on a day whose name I didn't know, the blue sky above me and the blue ocean before me, I recalled eyes blue, a hue between the two, and hand against my chest, I walked forward toward an unheard voice and an unspoken cry, calling me._


End file.
